August 1, 2009

Hot debate over whether DOJ is going soft on porn

At Politico, Josh Gerstein has this intriguing article, headlined "Porn prosecution fuels debate," which discusses a variety of issues concerning federal prosecution of obscenity crimes. Here is a snippet:

Social conservatives railed against the Clinton Administration for not prosecuting adult obscenity and were disappointed when few such cases were brought in the early years of the Bush Administration. Things perked up a bit in 2005 when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales set up an Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, which ultimately focused on prosecuting fetish, bestiality and so-called fringe porn.

Six months into the Obama Administration, the task force is still in business and is still headed by a former U.S. Attorney for Utah under President Ronald Reagan, Brent Ward....

Since Obama’s inauguration, prosecutors have pressed on with pending obscenity cases and accepted guilty pleas in one high-profile prosecution brought in Pittsburgh. However, there have been no announcements of new adult obscenity indictments, a trend that Justice Department officials declined to discuss, though they did note that federal prosecutions for child pornography have continued apace.